The Philosophy Book

46

THE LIFE WHICH

IS UNEXAMINED

IS NOT WORTH

LIVING

SOCRATES (469–399 BCE)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Epistemology

APPROACH

Dialectical method

BEFORE

c.600–450 BCE Pre-Socratic

philosophers in Ionia and Italy

attempt to explain the nature

of the cosmos.

Early 5th century BCE

Parmenides states that we

can only understand the

universe through reasoning.

c.450 BCE Protagoras and the

Sophists apply rhetoric to

philosophical questions.

AFTER

c.399–355 BCE Plato portrays

the character of Socrates in

the Apology and numerous

other dialogues.

4th century BCE Aristotle

acknowledges his debt to

Socrates’ method.

S

ocrates is often referred to

as one of the founders of

Western philosophy, and

yet he wrote nothing, established

no school, and held no particular

theories of his own. What he did do,

however, was persistently ask the

questions that interested him, and

in doing so evolved a new way of

thinking, or a new way of examining

what we think. This has been called

the Socratic, or dialectical, method

(“dialectical” because it proceeds

as a dialogue between opposing

views), and it earned him many

enemies in Athens, where he lived.

He was vilified as a Sophist

(someone who argues for the sake

of deception), and was sentenced to